May 2012

On March 28, 2012, the New York City Council adopted a citywide text amendment to Section 11-15 of the Zoning Resolution of the City of New York, which pertains to E-designations. E-designations are environmental designations listed on Appendix C to the Zoning Resolution, which signal that there are environmental requirements relating to hazardous materials, air quality or noise impacts on potential development sites identified during the environmental review process conducted for proposed zoning actions in the City of New York. In connection with the E-designation text amendment, the New York City Mayor’s Office of Environmental Remediation has proposed amendments to the E-designation rules for property owners to comply with these designations prior to site development. read more

On March 13, 2012, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection announced a final agreement requiring New York City to improve the overall water quality in New York Harbor. The agreement requires New York City to invest approximately $187 million over the next three years and an estimated $2.4 billion of public and private funding over the next 18 years to install green infrastructure technologies to manage stormwater before it enters the City’s combined sewer system.

On March 21, 2012, the United States Supreme Court issued a very significant decision affecting the administration of the Clean Water Act (“CWA”) by the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”). The Court held that an administrative compliance order issued by the EPA under the CWA is a final agency action that is subject to judicial review. This decision establishes a new precedent in that property owners may now immediately challenge a CWA order in the courts rather than choosing to either comply with the order or wait for EPA to bring an enforcement action while accruing penalties in the meantime. However, the reach of the decision beyond the CWA may be limited. read more

Earlier this year, Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer published a report entitled “Rooftop Revolution,” which proposes to install solar panels on the rooftops of New York City public school buildings. The report estimates that installing solar panels on all of NYC’s public school roofs that could support them would increase solar capacity in the five boroughs by over 2,500 percent, eliminate approximately 76,696 tons of carbon from the air each year (the equivalent of planting over 400,000 trees), and could create an estimated 5,423 green collar jobs.